Non-Violence (Nothing Ever Changes)
by Tryn
Summary: Another little vignette, on Seifer's past. The one thing I felt was missing from FF8 was the background of the other Orphanage Gang members, so I wanted to solve that. Possibly a short story that'll stand alone, or something that will be continued. PG for


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry if this offends those who are into New Age, but I wanted to   
write it from the perspective of Seifer, someone who believes that life should   
be something to be lived to the hilt.   
--SEIFER--  
With insomnia, nothing is real. I remember I didn't sleep when I was a kid,   
around four or five, before I came to the Orphanage.  
In the day, everything just flitted before my eyes and shifted and faded into   
the background or foreground, lost in the static of sunlight. Everything just   
slid before me like figure skaters into the past and then twirling smoothly into   
the present and then skidding back to the past again.  
So I had bags the size of elephant ears below my eyes, dark and black. The   
school nurse used to give me pills for it. I would nod perkily while her words   
faded into the back of my mind and would walk out of the office with a false   
spring to my step -- the nurse probably smiled behind me and say to herself,   
"There goes a good kid."   
Then I would go to the bathroom and flush everything down the toilet, the pills   
slipping into torrential depths. I would return home to my mother and stand   
awkwardly outside the open door while she asked me, "Did she give you any   
pills?"   
Mother was addicted to pills. Any type, red, blue, green, she loved them all, as   
if she had raised them herself on her little drug ranch, as if they clustered   
around her feet and tugged at her raggedy jeans whining for her attention.   
I would shake my head. No.   
"Then get the hell out!" she would scream at my face, from her place snuggled   
down into the second-hand sofa as Jeopardy flickered on the static-ky TV.  
I would turn and run, like a vampire denied access to sanctuary, barred by the   
invisible barrier. I only needed an invitation, was that so hard to give?  
I should be happy now. Mom's better, she got drug counselling during the years I   
was in the orphanage, and took me back to Balamb. She found faith in everything   
-- the trees, the trickling of water, the squeaking of dolphins, the sweet   
little tweet-tweetings of the ickle birds in their nests up in the boughs.  
Her voice, which was once so low and ragged, is smoother and silkier, yet   
infinitely more boring. You could set her words to the chirping of dolphins and   
the howling of wolves and sell it as New Age relaxation music. As she begins to   
reprimand me for the umpteenth time regarding my academic performance, her voice   
slips into a lull, a little rut that is like a bar of music repeating itself   
over and over again in my head.   
Does she wonder why I find the floor so exciting compared to her lecture? Truth   
be told, my mother has never been exciting. Drugs were a blip in the system,   
like a dying man spasming one last time before slipping into darkness.   
Boring, static, darkness.  
I can't tell you how much I want her to die. Just drop dead in the middle of her   
gentle, sensitive chidings she has learnt from the manuals with titles like   
Manage Your Teenage Children and How to be a Better Parent. Without a sound, the   
sight of me staring at the floor as she just collapses into a heap.   
Pure ballet, dancing in death.  
I don't want her to die because I hate her. I want her to die because she is so   
damn boring. I will not waste time hating someone who is too self-absorbed in   
the wonderful serenity of the world and wants to just love everything. That   
would be wasting a good measure of hate.   
I wish I could grab her by her yuppie haircut and scream into her ear: "Hello?   
Is anyone there? Hellooooooooo?" while her eyes swivel in horror.   
But I can't.  
So I stare at the floor and count the number of strands of thread in the   
wall-to-wall carpeting while her words skip around with the trickling water and   
the echolation of dolphins, rejoicing in the horrible dullness of it all,   
celebrating non-violence.   
Do you know what non-violence is?   
Let me tell you. It means nothing ever changes.  
Carpet thread number two thousand, six hundred and fifty-two...  



End file.
